Not the least among the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder were his prints. Of these one worthy of mention is “The Parable of the Good Shepherd.” The work shows Christ as the Good Shepherd at the doorway of a sheepfold. On his shoulders he carries an ewe. The other sheep crowd around him. High on the roof and through the sides of the sheepgate thieves break into the sheepfold. Elsewhere are sheep-tending scenes. Rather than drive them away, Christ seems to tolerate the thieves. He looks determined, however, and is in full control. Borne on the Lord’s shoulders, the ewe is the picture of contentment. Innocence characterizes the sheep. Loping seems to be in their minds, and enjoyment generally. Love thrives despite the dangers.
Obviously, Breugel’s work directs us to the passage in John, in which Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
“The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”
When the people did not understand this, Jesus added, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
In Breugel’s piece, everything seems to be happening at once—Jesus passing through the gate with the ewe even as the folk attend to the sheep and thieves creep through the holes that they made on the sides and roof of the gate.
Were it not a representation of a biblical passage, the scene would be another of Breugel’s depictions of peasant life, for which, together with his landscapes, we mostly remember him. In fact, Breugel was known as The Peasant—not only did he celebrate the peasantry in his art, but he moreover dressed himself up as one to bond with the country folk.
Breugel was basically a storyteller. Instead of just portraying a moment of tendresse between the Good Shepherd and the sheep, as in many a devotional painting, he included as many of the activities mentioned in the parable as could be accommodated, which is why we see alongside Jesus the Good Shepherd the thieves and robbers entering through the roof and sides and stealing the sheep.
It seems that Breugel really wants us to keep in mind the perspective of linear time even as we see the events, no matter their chronology, as being there, immediately present to the eyes, and the visual becomes cyclical, flowing like a fountain, a stream of consciousness.
In this sense are the activities synchronous. In fact, though composed with eternity in mind, the parable, indeed every parable, is a parable of time, and the moment is the clock’s equivalent of the sheepgate, with its promise of both opportunity and risk, loss and gain. Then may anyone pass through the moment, a savior, a friend, and also a foe—the Good Shepherd, and also the thief.
Whether it is ultimately the Good Shepherd or the thief, whether I will be carried on the shoulders of the savior to the grazing grounds, or snatched and clipped bleating within a stranger’s armpits to be slaughtered in the fields, all this depends on me.
And somehow this evokes the revolving carousel in Chinese restaurants, arrayed with platters of different dishes, from which the customers who sit around choose what to eat.
The mind—another sheepgate—is one such carousel. Thoughts continuously stream through it, every one of them with a potential to affect—either to elate or sadden, to annoy or please, to build up or destroy, to save or damn.
When this happens, and it always does, I just reflect on the carousel, and choose only those that are good and conducive to peace and happiness.
In this, choice is the word. Actually, voice—the small, still voice within, the voice of the Good Shepherd.